Walz says Electoral College ‘needs to go’

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said America must do away with the Electoral College and use a popular vote to elect the president.

“I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a … national popular vote,” Mr. Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, told donors at California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s house in Sacramento Tuesday.

“But that’s not the world we live in. So, we need to win Beaver County, Pennsylvania. We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada, and win. And the help that you give here today helps make that happen,” Mr. Walz said.

He also aired similar sentiments at a fundraising event earlier Tuesday in Seattle, where he reportedly said he is a “national popular vote guy.”

Changing from the Electoral College to a straight-up national popular vote wouldn’t be easy. It would require a constitutional amendment that would need the support of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and then ratification by three-fourths of the states.

Each is a tall order in ordinary circumstances and each becomes particularly unlikely in a polarized political environment in which calls to end the Electoral College are almost excluively coming from one party stung by its own recent defeats.

The Trump campaign immediately jumped on Walz’s comments.

The Trump War Room account on X asked, “Why does Tampon Tim hate the Constitution so much?”

“He hates the First Amendment. He hates the Supreme Court. He hates the Electoral College. But he sure loves communist China!” the post said.

Also on X, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt questioned if Mr. Walz was trying to lay “the groundwork to claim President Trump’s victory is illegitimate?”

A spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign aimed to clarify what Mr. Walz meant.

“Gov. Walz believes that every vote matters in the Electoral College and he is honored to be traveling the country and battleground states working to earn support for the Harris-Walz ticket,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“He was commenting to a crowd of strong supporters about how the campaign is built to win 270 electoral votes. And he was thanking them for their support that is helping fund those efforts.” 

Mr. Walz has said before that he supports using the national popular vote to elect presidents. As governor, he signed legislation last year to add Minnesota to the National Popular Vote Compact, which calls for states to award their electoral votes to the popular vote winner.

His opinion to change the system is not an unpopular one, especially since Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, but lost the electoral vote to Donald Trump. Former Democratic Vice President Al Gore faced the same fate against former Republican President George W. Bush in 2000.

For Republicans who support the Electoral College, a big reason is it keeps presidential elections from being decided by two states, heavily Democratic-populated California and New York.